ROBERT LIPSYTE PAPERS

Provenance

Donated by Robert Lipsyte between 1970 and 1992.

Restrictions

Non-circulating; available for research.

Copyright

This collection is protected by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title
17, U. S. Code). Reproductions can be made only if they are to be used for
"private study, scholarship, or research." It is the user's responsibility to
verify copyright ownership and to obtain all necessary permissions prior to
the reproduction, publication, or other use of any portion of these materials,
other than that noted above.

Biographical Sketch

The Lipsyte household in New York City welcomed newborn Robert Lipsyte into
their world on January 16, 1938, and although baby Lipsyte had yet to realize the
importance of the fact, he arrived in an environment full of books and a love for
learning. Lipsyte's parents were both teachers. As a teenager, Lipsyte
remained---in his words---"very fat" until he turned fourteen years old. He spent his
spare time reading and writing, deciding early to become a writer because writing
allowed him to "hide behind a typewriter" and "control the universe."

Among his early literary heroes Lipsyte counted Richard Halliburton, John
Steinbeck, and J.D. Salinger. From each author he learned a specific element of the
writing trade. Halliburton introduced him to "the author as hero." According to
Lipsyte, Halliburton taught him that "first, you swim in the roiling croc-infested
waters, then you write about it." Steinbeck taught him compassion for people,
sense of place, and a love for nature. And Salinger's Holden Caulfield of The
Catcher in the Rye appealed to him as an "intelligent, sensitive, real" character
who was crazier than himself.

After graduating from Columbia University in 1957, Lipsyte planned to enter
graduate school in California in the fall; however, he landed a job as a copy boy in
the sports department of the New York Times and continued working for
the Times throughout the next fourteen years. During that time, he turned
a weekly column for the Times into an internationally-syndicated sports
column and his experiences into a career as an author for young adults.

In 1965, Lipsyte covered a prize-fight in Las Vegas and heard a grizzled old boxing
manager talk about the three flights of dark, twisting steps that led up to his gym.
Lipsyte found himself captivated by the image. From this image and his experience
covering boxing came Lipsyte's first novel for young people, The
Contender (1967), which won the Child Study Children's Book Committee at
Bank Street College Award in 1967. Lipsyte received such favorable response from
The Contender's fans that he forsook his journalism career in 1971 to
concentrate on his novel writing.

In 1978 Lipsyte took a break from writing after being diagnosed with cancer.
Fortunately, chemotherapy eliminated the disease and Lipsyte resumed writing. In
1991 he published The Brave, a sequel to The Contender. The
story developed from a chance meeting with a young American-Indian who
described his fear of life on the reservation as well as his anxiety over leaving for
the white world and the rejection he would face. In The Brave, the
seventeen-year-old protagonist, Sonny Bear, runs away to New York City where he
meets Alfred, the hero of The Contender. Having abandoned his boxing
career, Alfred became a forty-year-old police sergeant dedicated to eradicating
drug trafficking in the Big Apple. Sonny becomes an unwitting pawn in the drug
war and is rescued by Alfred, who teaches the young boy to box.

During the last twenty years, Lipsyte actively pursued his career path as a fiction
writer, publishing books for adults as well as writing scripts for television and
movies. Yet the heart and soul of his work remained his novels for and about
adolescents, including One Fat Summer (1977), Summer Rules
(1981), and The Summerboy (1982), as well as Jock and Jill
(1982), Free to Be Muhammud Ali (1978), The Chemo Kid (1992),
and The Brave (1991). In 1991, Lipsyte returned to the New York
Times to write a weekly sports column and often critiques the sports industry
as just that---an industry---and not a form of popular recreation. He lives in New
Jersey with his wife, Marjorie, and their two children.

Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, volume
4:K-N (Detroit & London: Gale Research Co., 1993): 1483-1486.

Scope and Content

The Lipsyte collection holds typescripts, galleys, proofs, unbound blues, as well as
folded and gathered sheets. Most of these materials bear the editing marks of the
author, copy editor, and typesetter. They illustrate the tedious publishing process
and the various stages through which a manuscript progresses before coming to
print.

Assignment: Sports (1970, 1984) grew out of Lipsyte's columns for the
New York Times, although he edited them to appeal to an adolescent
audience. Assignment: Sports serves as a historical guide of American
athletics and runs the gamut of topics. Lipsyte chronicles the emergence of female
athletes, the Black Power protests in the 1968 Summer Olympics, and provides
portraits of sports figures such as Joe Namath, Muhammud Ali, and baseball
manager Casey Stengel. This collection of materials includes an edited typescript,
the master galley, unbound blues and unbound folded and gathered sheets. All
include the author's, editor's, and typesetter's marks.

In The Chemo Kid (1992), Lipsyte addresses the troubles an awkward
youth, Fred Bauer, experiences in high school and how he deals with having cancer.
As a side effect of his chemotherapy, an experimental drug gives Fred incredible
strength and sensory perception for short periods of time, enabling him to
accomplish herculean tasks. Besides using these new abilities to save his high
school from the local drug dealer and a steroid-pumped football star, Fred also
reveals the corruption of the town mayor and ties to Sinclair Ecosystems, a local
toxic-waste disposal plant illegally dumping waste into the town reservoir.
Ultimately, Fred's cancer retreats into remission. For this humorous, well-written
book the collection has an edited typescript, three sets of edited proofs, galleys,
unbound blues, and folded and gathered sheets.

In Free to Be Muhammud Ali (1978), Lipsyte wrote about the one figure in
boxing he considered the most colorful: Cassius Clay, or Muhammud Ali. When
Lipsyte began covering the boxing beat for the Times in 1964, he also
began following Ali's career. For more than three years he spent time with and
wrote about Ali. Finally, Lipsyte finished a biography of the famous boxer,
recounting episodes of the fighter's life to illustrate Ali's charmismatic nature. For
this novel, the collection contains three edited typescripts, an edited galley, a book
description for the front and back flap of the dust jacket, plus the book jacket layout
and color separation.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lipsyte wrote a "fifties trilogy" consisting of the
books One Fat Summer (1977), Summer Rules (1981), and
The Summerboy (1982). In this trilogy, protagonist Bobby Marks comes of
age in the fifties and conquers an adolescent weight problem. The action of each
book occurs in Rumson Lake, a resort town of upstate New York, where Bobby's
family spends the summers. Bobby matures during these vacations, learning to
overcome his problems through determination, hard work, and positive values.
This same coming-of-age theme runs through many of Lipsyte's books for
adolescents. The collection holds an edited manuscript, proofs, and unbound blues
for The Summerboy and the book jacket layout and color separation for
One Fat Summer.